This bibliography gathers publications over many years from a variety of researchers exploring topics of agency, directionality, and function (among others) with a special emphasis on CASP members. It began with work from teams within the initial Agency, Directionality and Function project and continues to be populated with papers and articles from diverse researchers looking to further develop and expand ways of working interdisciplinarily on the complex theme of teleology.
Included in the bibliography are entries for publications and books that many scholars involved in the Agency, Directionality and Function project recommended as foundational texts in their field of study. We welcome suggestions for additions to the bibliography from CASP members.
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Mechanism, Vitalism and Organicism
Duckworth, R. A. (2009). "The role of behavior in evolution: a search for mechanism." Evolutionary Ecology 23: 513–531.
El-Hani, C. N., & Reis, C. R. M. (2021). Research Strategies and Value Outlooks in Scientific Practices: For an Organicist Thinking and a Pluralist Methodology in the Biological Sciences. Philosophy World Democracy.
Esposito, M. (2014). Romantic Biology, 1890–1945. New York: Routledge.
Ghiselin, M.T. (1994). “Darwin’s language may seem teleological, but his thinking was another matter.” Biology and Philosophy 9:489–493.
Lenoir, T. (1982). The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lewens, T. (2004). Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Loeb, J. (1912). The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lovejoy, A. (1911). “The meaning of vitalism.” Science 33:610–614.
Mensch, J. (2013). Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Newman, L. (1991). “Unmasking Descartes’s case for the bête machine doctrine.” Canadian Journal for Philosophy 31:389–425.
Nicholson, D. (2019). “Is the cell really a machine?” Journal of Theoretical Biology 477:108–126.
Nicholson, D. and R. Gawne. (2015). “Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism but organicism: what the philosophy of biology was.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37:345–381.
Normandin, S. and C.T. Wolfe. (2013). Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Springer Dordrecht.
Peterson, E. (2016). The Life Organic: The Theoretical BIology Club and the Roots of Epigenesis. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Russell, E.S. (1945). The Directiveness of Organic Activities. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J.E.H. (2011). Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Woodger, J.H. (1929). Biological Principles. London: K. Paul, Trench and Trubner.
Medicine
AlOuda, S. K., Sasikumar, P., AlThunayan, T., Alaajam, F., Khan, S., Sahli, K. A., Abohassan, M. S., Pollitt, A., Jung, S. M., & Gibbins, J. M. (2023). Role of heat shock protein 47 in platelet glycoprotein VI dimerization and signaling. Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 7(6), 102177.
Arora, G., Banerjee, M., Langthasa, J., Bhat, R., & Chatterjee, S. (2023). Targeting metabolic fluxes reverts metastatic transitions in ovarian cancer. IScience, 26(11), 108081.
Bukkuri, A. 2026. Hauntings in the field: The evolutionary dynamics of semiotic corruption and tissue normativity in carcinogenesis. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 23(9): 2698-2719.
Bukkuri, A. 2026. The haunted Umwelt: a biosemiotic and hauntological account of immune semiotic corruption in field cancerization. Theory Biosci. 145, 47.
Bye, A. P., Kriek, N., Sage, T., Rawlings, S. J., Prodger, C., Kesavan, M., Lees, C., Booth, S., Cowen, L. G., Shefferd, K., Desborough, M. J., Gibbins, J. M., & Eyre, T. A. (2022). Pirtobrutinib results in reversible platelet dysfunction compared to ibrutinib and acalabrutinib. Haematologica, 108(5), 1429–1435.
De Simone, I., Baaten, C. C. F. M. J., Gibbins, J. M., Ten Cate, H., Heemskerk, J. W. M., Jones, C. I., & Van Der Meijden, P. E. J. (2023). Repeated platelet activation and the potential of previously activated platelets to contribute to thrombus formation. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 21(5), 1289–1306.
Geyer, C. E., Chen, H.-J., Bye, A. P., Manz, X. D., Guerra, D., Caniels, T. G., Bijl, T. P., Griffith, G. R., Hoepel, W., De Taeye, S. W., Veth, J., Vlaar, A. P., Amsterdam UMC COVID-19 Biobank, Vidarsson, G., Bogaard, H. J., Aman, J., Gibbins, J. M., Van Gils, M. J., De Winther, M. P., & Den Dunnen, J. (2023). Identification of new drugs to counteract anti-spike IgG-induced hyperinflammation in severe COVID-19. Life Science Alliance, 6(11), e202302106.
Griffiths, P. E., & Bourrat, P. (2023). Integrating evolutionary, developmental and physiological mismatch. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 11(1), 277–286.